03 MySQL Configuration

MySQL is a free, open source database, available for download at http://dev.mysql.com/ (more information can also be found at http://www.mysql.com) - also at this address, the JDBC driver for MySQL, Connector/J, can be downloaded. The Generally Available (GA) release is usually what is desired - it is best to use this instead of the Beta versions. For information on how to create a database in MySQL or create the tables, you will need to refer to the documentation that came with the version of MySQL you have decided to use. There are links to MySQL documentation as well on the above site.

MySQL Configuration

Table Type

uPortal relies on database transactional support, which in MySQL is dependent upon the underlying storage engine (per-table). The default (MyISAM) is not transaction safe. The most common transactional table type on MySQL is InnoDB. You configure InnoDB as the default:

[mysqld]
default-storage-engine=innodb

Alternatively you can change already-created MyISAM tables to Innodb tables with an ALTER TABLE statement - see the documentation for the exact syntax. Or, you can drop all your tables and re-create them with "TYPE=InnoDB" on your CREATE TABLE statements. If you're not sure about using TST (Transaction Safe Tables), do some reading on the MySQL site (http://www.mysql.com) about some of the companies and organizations that are currently using them - for instance, Slashdot.org uses MySQL InnoDB tables to handle their more than 100,000 hits per week.

Case-Sensitivity

MySQL table names are case-sensitive depending on the filesystem of the server. e.g. insensitive on Windows & Mac HFS+, Case sensitive on Unix. To prevent issues when moving between platforms it is recommended that you set:

[mysqld]
lower_case_table_names=1

Indexing

PRIMARY, UNIQUE and INDEX are added to the tables during initialization.

Performance tuning

You may get much better performance by enabling the MySQL query cache.

You can also set all of the memory, table, and connection limits as well as a host of other options.

# Example settings used for uPortal at Manchester
max_connections = 1500
table_cache = 512
query_cache_size = 128M
set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=128M
set-variable = innodb_log_file_size=256M
set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=20M
set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=4M
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1

uPortal Configuration

Before using MySQL with uPortal, several uPortal properties files need to be altered for MySQL. These include:

pom.xml

In the top level pom.xml file, you should replace 

<!-- The JDBC Driver used by uPortal -->
<jdbc.groupId>hsqldb</jdbc.groupId>
<jdbc.artifactId>hsqldb</jdbc.artifactId>
<jdbc.version>${hsqldb.version}</jdbc.version> 

with 

<!-- The JDBC Driver used by uPortal -->
<jdbc.groupId>mysql</jdbc.groupId>
<jdbc.artifactId>mysql-connector-java</jdbc.artifactId>
<jdbc.version>5.1.6</jdbc.version>

rdbm.properties

The rdbm.properties file can be located at uportal-impl/src/main/resources/properties/rdbm.properties

##### MySQL - example
hibernate.connection.driver_class=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
hibernate.connection.url=jdbc:mysql://my.school.edu:3306/portal
hibernate.connection.username=test
hibernate.connection.password=mypass
hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect

dbloader.xml

The dbloader.xml file can be located atuportal-impl/src/main/resources/db/dbloader.xml 
You need to add a mapping specific to you setup, for example:

<db-type-mapping>
    <db-name>MySQL</db-name>
    <db-version>5.0.32-Debian_7etch5-log</db-version>
    <driver-name>MySQL-AB JDBC Driver</driver-name>
    <driver-version>mysql-connector-java-5.0.8 ( Revision: ${svn.Revision} )</driver-version>
    <type><generic>LONGVARCHAR</generic><local>TEXT</local></type>
</db-type-mapping> 

personDirectoryContext.xml 

The personDirectoryContext.xml file can be located atuportal-impl/src/main/resources/contexts/personDirectoryContext.xml
Replace

<value>   
SELECT FIRST_NAME||' '||LAST_NAME AS FIRST_LAST, FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, EMAIL, USER_NAME
FROM UP_PERSON_DIR
WHERE USER_NAME=?
</value>

 with

<value>   
SELECT CONCAT(FIRST_NAME,' ',LAST_NAME) AS FIRST_LAST, FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, EMAIL, USER_NAME
FROM UP_PERSON_DIR
WHERE USER_NAME=?
</value>

Deadlock troubleshooting

One thing that will most likely come up in working with uPortal and MySQL (or any database for that matter) is the issue of deadlocks - when a record is needed to be accessed by two different queries at the same time. The MySQL site has an EXCELLENT chapter on dealing with these. Overall, the on-line reference guide for MySQL is an EXCELLENT resource.

Resources:
Download driver / connector; http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/5.0.html